Batty Movie

Spoiler Alert: I may give away too many plot points, so if you thought you might like to see The Bat from 1959 and you like to be surprised, you might want to skip this post till after you see the movie (that’s probably a run-on sentence).

I’ve had so much fun writing about cheesy horror movies that I asked Steven could we watch some more last weekend. He graciously agreed. I was a little disappointed in the cheese quality of our selections. I mean, they weren’t bad (although I do enjoy the irony of being disappointed that a movie is good). However, looking back at the truck sized plot holes in our first movie, I thought it was worth a post.

The Bat stars Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Now, Price has done some majorly cheesy movies, but I think the lowest Moorehead ever stooped was television (and who didn’t love Endora?). Although I may be wrong about that. I’ll have to look in Video Hound for a list of her movies. They used to make a lot more movies than they do these days, so the potential for cheese was greater.

But getting on to the movie. Moorehead plays a crime writer who has rented a mansion which may or may not be haunted. Right away you know you’re in for some excitement, because what fictional crime writer doesn’t encounter an actual murder? None that I know of.

Agnes’ lady maid and constant companion (I know it’s more proper to refer to her as Moorehead, but I feel it is friendlier to call her Agnes). Where was I? Oh yes, the companion right away warns Agnes about this mysterious killer known as The Bat. The Bat apparently rips people’s throats out with a claw. I did not know that was how a bat could kill somebody. I thought movie bats sucked people’s blood, but I guess that’s just vampire movies.

Anyways, this is plot hole number one, which I did not realize till much later when I started pondering What Really Happened (and that’s what makes a good movie plot hole: it’s not till much later on when you go, “Wait a minute!”). Here we have the murderer mentioned early on (as you should have in a murder mystery), but with no motive ascribed. Later on, when we get to the murders this movie is concerned with, there is a very definite motive, namely a million dollars (or is it two?) embezzled from the bank (actually the thief says he “embezzled” the money, but I think it was stolen and he was stepping way up in class). So when the Bat supposedly started killing, his motive for the later killings (the ones we see) hadn’t even happened yet.

But this actually might not be a plot hole. I don’t quite understand what went on. It’s quite possible that The Bat did not do all the killings, or even that The Bat wasn’t The Bat, or that there was no Bat, or maybe the Bat even randomly killed some people earlier in case he needed to establish a cover story. There are actual bats, by the way. The lady maid is threatened by one slipped through the transom, and Vincent Price, who is a doctor, is seen messing around with some in a scientific fashion.

We also encounter some typical old movie female behavior. There’s a mysterious stranger in the house the police can’t find him. We’re in the bedroom with the door locked and the transom kind of sort of blocked. Let’s try to get some sleep! Oh and the perennial, I just heard a noise! I’ll go investigate, you wait here. Never mind that my friend in the other room has a gun and I only have a flashlight (why didn’t that bitch give me the gun? is a question never asked).

The movie is pretty absorbing. It is definitely suspenseful and even scary in parts. It isn’t till afterwards that you realize that it does not make a whole lot of sense.

Looking back over this write up, I don’t think I’ve really done justice to how much the movie really doesn’t make sense. On the brighter side, it hasn’t been nearly the spoiler I alerted you about in the first paragraph. So go ahead and watch the movie. Tell me what you think.

And if anybody really does not want to watch the movie and really would like a plot summary, let me know that too. It’ll give me a subject for a whole nother blog post (oh, I know “whole nother” is not proper English. I can be cheesy too, can’t I?).